Film Trailers vs Film Openings

Film Trailers vs Film Openings

It is important that our opening scene is not too trailer like, and this is the reason for this research.

Film Trailers

A trailer is an advertisement for a film that will be shown in the future at a cinema. Trailers consist of a series selected shots from the film being advertised. The purpose of the trailer is to attract an audience to the film, the extracts seen in the trailer are usually taken from the most exciting, funny, or otherwise important parts of the film but in abbreviated form and usually without producing spoilers. Film trailers help in capturing the mood of the film.

Characteristics of film trailers:

v Scene to scene jump cuts with transition effects

v Shots not held for long periods of time

v One liners from character conversations

v Unclear plots (from what the audience is given in the trailer)

Film Openings

Film openings allow the audience to establish the genre of the film due to key genre conventions. For example, within a psychological thriller like our film opening key conventions would be low key lighting to create tension and eerie music can be used. Also often in an opening sequence for a psychological thriller there may be death of characters.

Characteristics of Film Openings (especially for psychological thrillers):

v Death of characters

v Eerie music and low key lighting

v Establishing shots of setting

v A compelling hook

v Character introduction

We plan to use Low key lighting and kill off a character in order to conform to the conventions for our psychological thriller.